1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improvement in flat electric connector for facilitating the assembling of wire harnesses for internal wiring of electric equipments, as well as the attaching of the wire harness to the electric equipment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, in order to interconnect the components in an electric equipment, a wire harness is assembled by connecting electric connectors to a network of wires laid in accordance with the layout of the components and then winding with tapes so as to bind the connectors and wires together.
Thus assembled wire harnesses are installed in the electric equipments while the latter are moving on an assembling conveyor. It follows therefore that the step of attaching the connectors such as flat connectors over the terminal bolts of the electric components and tightening the nuts must be accomplished quickly and without fail.
When two prior art crimp type ring terminals shown in FIG. 1 are mounted on a single bolt and are tightened by means of a nut to clamp them securely, it occurs very often that, because the crimping portion is thicker than the ring portion, the upper terminal rides over the crimping portion of the lower terminal so that the two terminals do not contact each other sufficiently closely, resulting in an inferior assembling. To avoid this, the worker has to tighten the nut while correctly positioning the two terminals in relation to each other, in such a manner as to avoid the overlapping of crimping portions of these two terminals.
FIGS. 2 and 3 show other types of prior art terminal in which two wires are beforehand crimped on the terminal before the latter is secured to the bolt to overcome the above-described drawback.
These known terminals, however, requires an assembling process as illustrated in FIGS. 4a to 4d, resulting in a lowered efficiency of assembling of the wire harness.
Namely, in the assembling process for assembling the wire harness as shown in FIGS. 4a to 4d employs the steps of preparing two wire elements A, B as shown in FIG. 4a, connecting branching lines A', B' to these wire elements A, B in a manner shown in FIG. 4b, crimping the branching lines A', B' to the common terminal C in a manner shown in FIG. 4c and binding the wire elements A, B with a tape D wound therearound in a manner illustrated in FIG. 4d. The difficulty rises particularly in the step of crimping the branching wires A', B' to the common terminal C shown in FIG. 4c, because it is necessary to bring the wire elements of considerable length to the position of the crimping machine and to stack the same at the position near the crimping machine, to deteriorate the condition of the work resulting in a lowered efficiency of the work.